Shooters & Shadowrun

"Shooters" are a huge genre of video games in every way possible. Headlining almost every statistic available (hours played, best sellers, most preordered etc) it's obvious that the genre gets plenty of play here at the LAN Center. On a typical day games like Call of Duty, Counter Strike, Halo, the latest Tom Clancy titles, Fallout and even Far Cry are checked out and being played more than any other genre/sub genre. "Shooters" as a genre are very interesting to me, as out of all video games I've ever played, it is my least explored genre.

First off, what classifies as a "shooter"? Ironically enough, I really dislike leashing a game to it's genre. It feels unfair to me, despite it simply being a classification. I think sometimes it results in a game being unfairly judged because it is compared to games of that genre/sub genre. I'll write about this too (stay tuned!) I guess I would say that a " shooter" is a game that values reflexes and swiftness that involves gun play. Going even deeper, I would say there's a category called "online shooters" which abides by the description, but in an online pvp environment. So, that being said, online shooters are basically our bread and butter at the LAN center, like it or not. Like I said above, my personal experiences in the realm of online shooters is pretty unexplored, but the shooters I did play were some of the most competitive and thrilling games I ever got into.

My start in the "online shooter" world was probably one of my favorite games of all time, Shadowrun. Before Shadowrun, I played 007, Syphon Filter, Time Splitters and Serious Sam, but these games were limited to local multiplayer, and despite loving these games, Shadowrun's multiplayer hooked me. To those of you that haven't played Shadowrun (2007), the game was kind of similar to Counter Strike, but fantasy oriented. You started rounds with money that you earned from kills and objectives the round before to buy technology, guns, skills and even magic. In Shadowrun, you got to pick what Race you would play in each map, with humans, elves, dwarves and trolls running around flinging magic and shooting guns and swinging katanas, each game felt so different. Shadowrun meant a lot to me. Shadowrun solidified friendships I had and created new ones. I played with anyone I knew that had the game. I played at least a few matches a week for years (I'm serious!). I think Shadowrun is responsible for any competitive spirit in me today. My team and I were incredible. When we did lose a match, which was rare, we'd message our opponents and scrim (so to speak) and got even better. Unfortunately Shadowrun dropped its main server only 5.5 years after its release, or I'd still be playing it to this day.

Thanks to Shadowrun, I did play a handful of shooters that I really really loved. Gears of War 2, TF2, Gotham City Imposters and Brink all infactuated me deeply, and I played all these games ALOT. I loved Gears of War's style, TF2's uniqueness, GCI's goofiness and Brink's intensity (Trust me, Brink wasn't a bad game). Nothing ever felt the same as Shadowrun, but I still play the occasional shooters. The main reason for this blog is I very frequently get asked about my knowledge of shooter games, and my answer is usually "not much". But when it comes to Shadowrun, Brink, GCI, TF2 and Gears, I know quite a bit! I'm currently playing Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2 as my shooter fix and I love it, so far. So to anyone reading this, if you have any suggestions of "shooters" I'd like, send em my way! Clearly there's a part of me that really likes these types of games, but I haven't been very impressed by many recently. Maybe, with all your help, I can replace the void that Shadowrun's depature has left.